Once clear of the cameras, Cyrus dropped his left hand back to a comfortable position in the open driver side window. He drove up to the front gate of the estate without hesitation. Two guards were stationed at the pair of twelve-foot-high wrought iron gates. One guard remained in the small windowed shack beside the gate, while the other approached Cyrus’s truck.
Cyrus explained that he was here to see Adreakay Escobar, and he said that Chad Brewster sent him. The heavyset security guard looked at Cyrus suspiciously but said nothing. The guard backed away from the truck while keeping a close eye on it. Pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt, he spoke quietly into it. There was a response that Cyrus couldn’t make out. This was followed by a short, rapid-fire exchange between the guard and whoever was on the other end of the radio.
Cyrus watched the conversation, but no matter how he strained, he couldn’t make out what was being said. He considered the information he’d been provided. If it was accurate, the man he had asked for, Adreakay Escobar, was not present at the estate. Escobar should be back in Mexico visiting his sick mother. But the lengthy exchange he was witnessing concerned him. If his information wasn’t accurate, things were about to get complicated.
Finally, the guard seemed satisfied. He turned and headed for the guard shack. He spoke briefly with the man stationed there. A moment later, Cyrus heard the door open on the passenger side of the truck. The gate guard climbed in. Cyrus wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the man had a Glock leveled at his gut.
Using broken English, the guard instructed him to drive up to the main house. The gates began to slide open, a section retracting into the fence on each side of the drive. As soon as the gates reached their rest position, Cyrus dropped the gear selector into drive and slowly advanced up the driveway. He followed the two-lane paved road along its winding approach and through a small grove of thick trees, before the main house finally came into view.
The house was three stories tall and fashioned after an Eighteenth Century, Deep South, plantation mansion. There was a deep-set front porch that spanned the entire front of the enormous white-washed façade. A third story veranda overlooked the front of the estate and was supported by a half-dozen enormous white pillars.
At the prompting of the armed passenger, Cyrus parked under the two-story-high portico immediately before the home’s pair of massive French doors. He left the keys in the ignition and climbed down from the truck. Another armed Hispanic man was waiting to lead him to the front door of the house, where he was searched. They took his wallet and the Magnum. His hands were unceremoniously handcuffed behind his back, and he was led into the enormous entryway of the house.
Two armed men escorted Cyrus into a large library, just off the tiled entryway. The room was richly appointed with thick dark carpeting, while the walls were lined with beautiful oak bookcases reaching from the floor to the ten-foot-high ceiling, ringed with ornate molding. But while the woodworking of the bookcases was grand in craftsmanship and artistry, the shelves didn’t hold a single book. Wide shelves were lined with precisely detailed, high quality models of sports cars and exotic aircraft. The room was large, at twenty by thirty. An over-stuffed sofa and a pair of matching chairs sat in a group at one end of the room while a ten-foot-long conference table occupied the center. The other end of the room was dominated by a massive, antique oak desk that stood before a wide bay window overlooking the painstakingly manicured lawns.
The two armed men led Cyrus into the room but offered no explanation. He looked around, taking everything in. Given his current situation, the room’s details might hold the key to his survival. Coming here was a calculated risk. Success was by no means guaranteed. He needed to be at the top of his game.
The toy models lining the bookshelves offered no help at all. There was nothing he could use as a weapon. The same could be said for the large conference table. It was completely empty. The six office chairs surrounding it were equally useless. While the large antique desk should’ve been the best place to find an improvised weapon, its surface held only two items, a small antique desk lamp and a closed laptop computer.
Cyrus looked at the guard standing to his right and the other guard off further to his left. They were both armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatics. All was not lost. They’d confiscated his .357 revolver, but that was to be expected. It was a throw-down gun anyway. With its serial number filed off, it couldn’t be traced. He’d expected it to be taken as soon as he arrived. It would’ve been more conspicuous to arrive unarmed. No, there were plenty of weapons on hand after all. Liberating a sidearm from one of his escorts would prove little trouble. That sorted, it was time for Cyrus to start pushing some buttons.
“What’s this all about?” Cyrus asked one of the guards.
The guard’s cold stare was supposed to be intimidating. Maybe it was, when he used it on street thugs. “Señor Alvares will be right with you.”
Cyrus did his best to look uncomfortable at the man’s reply. “Alvares? That’s not necessary! There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m here to speak with Escobar.”
A voice sounded from the far corner of the room. “It is strange that I should have a guest at the gate asking to speak with Escobar,” the man said. Cyrus immediately turned to face the speaker.
Bolo Alvares was standing in the doorway on the far side of the room. A pair of additional security guards stood behind him. “Even more interesting, when I find that you were sent by Señor Brewster. You see, I have been having a great deal of trouble getting in touch with Señor Brewster. He and I have an arrangement, but he seems reluctant to make good on his side of the deal.”
When Alvares walked into the room, Cyrus got a better look at the two men with him. They were both large. Very large. Maybe two hundred eighty pounds apiece. And they were built like they spent entire days in the gym. How either of them could turn his head was a mystery. Neither man appeared to have a neck! But as alarming as all of that was, what struck Cyrus as even odder was that the two men looked like mirror images of each other. Brothers? They had to be. Alvares was a very large man, but these two were gigantic. It was an obvious intimidation tactic.
Alvares hadn’t asked a question yet, so Cyrus kept his mouth shut. He wanted to see where this was going. It was best for Alvares to start the conversation.
But Alvares didn’t speak up…not at first. Instead, he dismissed the two guards that had brought Cyrus into the room. Before one of the guards left, he placed the .357 on Alvares’s desk. As the two men exited, the brothers took up flanking positions on either side of Cyrus. He did his best to look uncomfortable with his circumstances. The brothers towered over him by at least eight inches. He wanted to look intimidated, when in truth, things were going remarkably close to plan. More or less.
Saying something in Spanish, Alvares sent one of the brothers to the door. The man leaned into the hallway and looked around. He stepped back into the room, shook his head, and closed the pair of French doors behind him.
Cyrus took this as a positive sign. The guards who just left spoke English. Apparently the twins spoke only Spanish. This was a sign that Alvares wanted their conversation to remain confidential. He didn’t even want his own men aware of the details. Alvares would be sure to speak only in English, thereby keeping his henchmen in the dark. It meant the information was highly compartmentalized. Cyrus just needed to find out who was in the loop. Getting Alvares to admit such a thing would be the tricky part.
Alvares was quiet. His eyes moved slowly over Cyrus, taking him in. Cyrus knew the man was looking at what remained of the scrapes and bruises on his head, neck, and arms. But it was creepy. Alvares’s gaze was disconcerting.
“So?” Alvares said, finally breaking the silence. “Chad Brewster sent you to speak with me?”
Cyrus shook his head. He tried to look confused. “No. Brewster sent me to speak with Adreakay Escobar. I’m only to speak with Escobar.”
“Escobar works for me,” Alvares said coldly. “Whatever you
had to say to him, you can say to me!”
Cyrus considered what Alvares said. This was not the reaction that Alvares wanted. Clearly angered, Alvares leaned across his desk and snatched up the .357 revolver. He pulled the hammer back and pointed the gun at Cyrus’s face. “Speak now, or I will mail you back to your friend in many small boxes!”
The surprise on Cyrus’s face was the very best acting he could manage, but his quality time with Alvares’s psych profile meant that none of this was truly surprising. And several reports from the FBI files indicated that Alvares had a proclivity for using his enemy’s weapons against them. The fact that Cyrus would eventually be staring down the barrel of his own gun had been a virtual certainty. It hadn’t taken long. That was why he had loaded it with blanks. It would afford him a small margin of error should he miscalculate Alvares’s impulse control.
“Okay!” Cyrus relented. “Okay!”
Alvares lowered the gun and glared at him expectantly.
“Brewster said he hit a delay sneaking the platforms out of the lab, but he’ll have them ready in a week. I was supposed to tell Escobar to wire the down payment and have the rest ready when he picks the hardware up on the twenty-second.”
The confusion was evident on Alvares’s face. It surprised Cyrus that it took the man a few moments to put it together. He was starting to grow concerned. Could he have been too subtle in hinting at Escobar’s betrayal? He was beginning to worry that he had overestimated Alvares. The man might not be smart enough for the con to work. A sudden flash of anger in Alvares’s eyes told Cyrus that things had finally clicked. The drug lord wasn’t a rocket scientist, but he was finally catching up. How he had managed to rise to this level of power would have seemed comical to Cyrus under different circumstances. It also meant that his suspicion that Alvares’s brutality was largely for show was now unlikely. The man lacked the intelligence for such forethought. Things could get sticky at any moment.
A surreptitious glance at the guards beside him told Cyrus that both men were equally troubled by their boss’s display of emotion. Good enough, Cyrus thought. It was time for the next stage of his plan. His hands were cuffed behind his back. He needed to correct that injustice.
Taking great care not to draw attention from anyone in the room, Cyrus ran the tips of the fingers of his right hand along the skin on his left forearm, just above the wrist. He immediately felt the tiny lump of the foreign substance beneath his skin. Adjusting the position of his fingers, he felt the small dab of superglue he’d placed on his arm earlier in the day. He pulled the tiny fleck of glue away and let it fall to the carpet. It was too small to be noticed. Feeling around on the surface of his skin, he found the edge of the foreign object and applied pressure. When he pressed down on the far end of the object, he felt the close end strain against his skin. A little more pressure and the small thin wire pierced the surface of his skin. A little additional pressure and the wire was sticking out far enough to pinch between his thumb and finger.
After pulling the thin wire free from his flesh, he felt for the end. Before inserting the ridged wire under his skin and sealing the tiny puncture in his flesh with superglue, he had bent one end of the wire into the proper configuration. Finding the correct end of the wire by touch, he slid it into the keyhole on the first handcuff. Most people didn’t realize how easy it was to pick the lock on a set of standard-issue police handcuffs. Even the more secure, double-locking cuffs could be picked with the same tool and required only an additional few seconds of effort, if you knew what you were doing.
Cyrus watched as Alvares paced back and forth behind his desk. A large vein along the side of the man’s forehead became increasingly apparent. Soon he was pacing and clinching his fists over and over again. Cyrus had to look away to keep a grin from his face. It was as if he could see each thought slowly making its way through the man’s mind.
Turning to Cyrus, Alvares’s eyes flared with anger. He leaned over the desk and shouted at Cyrus. “This is not possible! I don’t know what your game is, but Escobar did not do what you say!”
It was all Cyrus could do to keep from laughing out loud. The man really was a fool. “You don’t believe that your right-hand man could betray you? Are you kidding? You’re drug dealers! How much loyalty can the man have?”
Cyrus couldn’t help himself, he shook his head and chuckled. The arrogance was incredible!
Some of the tension seemed to fade from Alvares’s face. Cyrus saw this, and he felt a tingling. Something had changed. A moment later a smile reached Alvares’s lips, and Cyrus knew something was wrong.
“You’re very tricky, my friend,” Alvares said with a broad smile. “I don’t know your game, but you have gambled, and you have lost! Escobar could not betray me in this matter. He knew nothing of my arrangement with Señor Brewster. He knows nothing of this technology!”
Alvares shook his head and pointed at Cyrus. “Some secrets are too sensitive to share with even my most trusted advisor!”
And there it was, everything Cyrus needed to know. The people inside Alvares’s organization had no knowledge of Meridian.
“Thanks,” Cyrus said with a very relieved smile. “I had to be sure.”
Without a moments hesitation, he tapped the heel of his left hiking boot stiffly on the floor three times. This brought a suspicious look from Alvares, but the look didn’t last long. An instant later an enormous explosion detonated under the portico in front of the mansion. The explosives Cyrus had planted under the front end of his truck ignited in a devastating explosion that shattered the front doors of the home, rocked the house on its foundation, and sent shrapnel and flames flying in every direction.
While everyone was caught off guard, Cyrus made his move. Both hands were already free from the handcuffs. He had already spun the hinged clasp of one cuff silently into position, turning it into deadly steel hook. When the bomb went off, he attacked the first of the giant guards with the blunt, hooked end of the open handcuff. In a blinding swing, he slashed it across the man’s throat, ripping a wide wound of cartilage and gristle. The giant’s first reaction was to grasp at his throat with both hands. As he did, the gun flew free from his grip, already forgotten in the primal instinct to preserve his own life.
Cyrus snatched the guard’s gun from mid air and racked the slide, ensuring there was a round in the chamber. He drew the sights of the Glock on the second brother, just as the man was raising his gun to fire.
The guard fired first, but he fired before he’d brought his gun fully to bear and the shot went wide. Cyrus didn’t give him an opportunity for a second shot. A double-tap to the heart and a single shot to the head were fired off as fast as Cyrus could pull the trigger. But even as the second brother toppled to the floor, Cyrus knew that one threat remained.
His eyes turned to Alvares, who stood on the other side of his desk, drawing down on him with his own .357 revolver. Cyrus couldn’t get his gun into position fast enough. He was at a disadvantage. The look in Alvares’s eyes was feral. He was a rabid animal, frothing with rage. Baring his teeth, he pulled the trigger.
The .357 Magnum’s distinctive report was enough to rattle Cyrus’s teeth. It was not a gun to be fired without ear protection. There was even a short burst of flame from the barrel with the discharge. But still, Cyrus stood, staring Alvares down.
The confusion read clearly across the drug lord’s face. Cyrus should have been dead right now. But the man proved himself not to be a deep thinker, just as Cyrus suspected. Alvares held the gun steady and pulled the trigger again. There was a near deafening blast from the gun, complete with a muzzle flash—but no bullet.
Cyrus thought the man would finally understand and give it up. That wasn’t the case. Alvares cried out in a fit of rage and pulled the trigger three more times in rapid succession.
Cyrus wasn’t sure if the report from the gunshots was echoing around the room or if the sound was reverberating inside his skull. He just knew that he wanted it to stop. Raising his lib
erated Glock in a relaxed manner, he fired a rapid double-tap to Alvares’s heart, followed by a single round to the head.
Cyrus heard a hollow thud as Alvares’s head bounced off the side of his desk before his corpse struck the floor. The interrogation had gone according to plan, but that jackass with the .357 had given him a splitting headache. Next time he tried something like this, he would be sure to use lighter loads. The .357 had been an educated guess. In reading the FBI reports, he knew that Alvares had a penchant for killing his rivals with their own weapons. And he suspected that showing up here today with an old fashioned wheel gun would only ensure that, should worst come to worst, Alvares would try to put him down using the Magnum. It had all worked out for the best, but Cyrus was left hoping he hadn’t done any permanent damage to his hearing.
Retrieving the unused Glock from the second guard, he tossed the near spent Glock aside. He did a press check on the chamber and found the gun ready to fire. With the gun leveled in the direction of the door he’d used to enter the room, Cyrus stepped over the bodies and made his way to the pair of French doors Alvares had used to enter the office. Peeking through the doorway, he found the hallway beyond empty.
He made his way down the hall and stepped out into a large, modern kitchen furnished with the latest in industrial appliances. The room was deserted. He headed for the back door.
A glance through the window of the back door gave him a view of two men with automatic rifles kneeling behind the masonry work surrounding the patio outside the kitchen. The men had their backs to the house. They obviously expected any sort of attack to come from beyond the grounds, not inside the house.
Cyrus stepped out the door and onto the pavement of the wide patio. One of the armed men glanced over his shoulder and did a double-take when he noticed Cyrus. He nearly fell over trying to turn and bring his rifle to bear. Cyrus fired two shots, one to the chest and one to the head, felling the man where he knelt. This instantly spurred the other armed man into action. Cyrus dropped him with a similar double-tap before the man could gain a position and offer a threat. He felt no moral qualms about shooting these men dead. They were the enemy. They would have killed him, if only given the chance.
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